Re: Latin and other irrelevant topics

[Nick Williams <nickw@acm.org>]

Robert Dewar wrote:


> Ah, so you were just guessing about the meaning of cf :-) And
> here I was thinking you were quoting Ovid (though I must say
> I cannot remember the use of this Latin word in Ovid, it does
> not easily fit into Iambic pentameter -- well actually that's
> not fair, it could fit, but I still don't remember him using
> the term, and I had to learn thousands of lines of Ovid -- it
> was the usual punishment at my school -- so while we were in
> exile being punished, we got to learn all about his laments
> of frigid winters in the North :-)

Iambic pentameter, in Ovid? Say it isn't so! Surely most of Ovid is 
elegiac couplets, wherein both the hexameters and the pentameters are 
_dactylic_? And the bits of verse that aren't elegiac couplets are 
dactylic hexameter pure and simple (like the Metamorphoses).

Assuming that the word in question is 'conferre'; it appears in both 
Metamorphoses and Amores in its infinitive form, although exceedingly 
infrequently; the 'contul-' perfect root is rather more common, it seems.

Obviously, it is significantly easier to scan conferre in hexameter, 
because the two long syllables can be the second syllable of a spondee, 
and the start of the next foot: cf. 'et conferre gradum, et veniendi 
discere causas' (Aeneid, Book IV, Aeneas' fallen countrymen greet him
in the underworld).

Cheers,

Nick Williams
PxCS.